AWARD WINNING NOTIFICATIONS!

Just had one of these traditional lottery scam emails. This one is more teh laem than most I've seen. I will share the full text with you...

SOUTH AFRICAN WORLDWIDE LOTTERY.
138 EDWARD STREET, 4TH FLOOR
BARINOR BUILDING
JOHANNESBURG,SOUTH AFRICA.
Ref: SAWWL/831201/04
Batch: 23/25/DC28
Date:12-02-2005

So it's been sent... tomorrow.

WINNING NOTIFICATION:
We happily announce to you the draw of the SOUTH AFRICA WORLD WIDE LOTTERY programs held on the 11th of FERBUARY 2005 in CAIRO, EGPYT.

Hmmm. Ferbuary, eh? And Cairo, Egypt... that famous province of South Africa.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:53257200434-284 with Serial number 5388/02 drew the lucky numbers: 5404/04, which
subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category.

Is it just me, or does the serial number look suspiciously like the lucky numbers? Normally in these things, they at least make an attempt to make the numbers look genuine!

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of US$2,500,000.00 (Two million, five hundred Thousand,United States Dollars) in cash credited to file PC/9080118308/02.
This is from a total cash prize of US $ 25 Million dollars,shared amongst the first Fifty (50) lucky winners in this category.

This would suggest that fifty (50) lucky winners would get the same amount, as I read it. But I pick up 10% of that fund, instead of the 2% I'm due. Nice.

Please note that your lucky winning number falls within our European booklet representative office in Europe as indicated in your play coupon.

I have NO IDEA what that's supposed to mean. Apparently I have a play coupon, though.

In view of
this, your US$2,500,000.00 (Two million, five hundred thousand,United States Dollars) would be released to you by our security firm in Europe. Our European agent will immediately commence the process to facilitate the release of your funds as soon as you contact him. All participants were selected randomly from World Wide Web site through computer draw system and extracted from over 100,000 companies.

So I've been selected off the internet then. So I can't have a play coupon, then. Make your mind up!

This promotion takes place annually. For security reasons, you are advised to keep your winning information confidential till your claims is processed and your money remitted to you in whatever manner you deem fit to claim your prize. This is part of our precautionary measure to avoid double claiming and unwarranted abuse of this program by someunscrupulous elements.

Yeah, blah blah blah. The usual bit put in to try and look like legalese. But here comes my favourite part...

To file for your claim, please contact our fiduciary agent:
OFFICER ROLEX LINUX.
CHURCHGATE INC.
Email:generalagent1@mail.com

Genius! As if the previous bit wasn't rubbish enough, they top it all off by letting their automated spam writing software come up with the most ridiculously unbelievable name ever! Not only that, one of the words they chose - "Rolex" - is being filtered by virtually every spam filter on the entire planet, what with it being the new "Gener1c V1agra"... Brilliant! The rest of the email pales in comparisson, but let's do it for completeness sake...

To avoid unnecessary delays and complications, please quote your
reference/batch numbers in any correspondences with us or our designated
agent. Congratulations once more from all members and staffs of this
program.

"Staffs", eh? Congratulations from all members and Staffordshire.

Thank you for being part of our promotional lottery program.
Sincerely,
SIR H.J.PONFA
SOUTH AFRICA WORLDWIDE LOTTERY CO-ORDINATOR.
EMAIL:generalagent1@mail.com

Thank you, "Sir H.J.Ponfa" (no spaces? Okay then) for giving me a laugh at your marvelous ineptitude. Sincerely.

Latest computer - update

I've just braved several years of dust and fluff and performed a detailed autopsy on this latest computer, and I include it here mainly because there's a chance that I'll lose the bit of paper with these findings on... but some might find it interesting, I suppose.

The PC is a Dell Dimension 4100. Windows ME product key present on the side dates it to 2000/2001 which sounds right for Ian's history. Legal copy of XP Home on the hard drive will be binned as soon as possible for Debian to take its place.

Graphics card is a Creative Labs branded nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4400. As mentioned before, the fan on it was responsible for most of the noise, so I've taken it out and popped the fan and heatsink off (very easy). It will take a fancy, silent heatpipe cooler perfectly.

Hard drive is a Maxtor Diamond Max Plus 9, 120Gb. Noisier than gravel in stilettos on hollow metal floor, as far as I'm concerned. Fortunately it can be quietened down by an acoustic enclosure, which is cheaper than replacing it with a Seagate drive of equivalent size (just).

Sound card is a Creative SB Live! Value. I hate that exclamation mark in the middle... anyway, it comes with the Live Drive, which fills at present one of the two 5.25" bays. Lame case design means it'll have to go for an acoustic enclosure to take its place unless I get a new case... which I'd like to do, to be honest.

Processor fan is quiet, but audible. Could be quieter... and it will be, by jove.

PSU is very quiet indeed; with the graphics card, hard drive and processor fan all unplugged it can't be heard over ambient room levels. Given it's a Dell component I imagine it'll last well - my first PSU in Kryten was made by Gypsies from stolen car parts and tin (it's true, that's what it said on the box) and didn't take to being on 24/7 at all, eventually rattling apart and sounding like a bee in a megaphone.

Deeply normal network card and Firewire card. The card providing the extra USB 2.0 ports has issues at the moment, under Windows at least, so might have to be removed. Of course, it could all be Windows' fault. Stoopid Windoze.

So, plan of action... heatsink for the video card, muffler for the drive, silent processor fan. Maybe a new case =) Total cost of all that - about the same as a Mac Mini... hey ho.

Another new computer

My colleague Ian has just got a new desktop PC and was going to drop his old one in a skip before realising that I might like the bits. He wasn't sure about all the figures, with it having sat dormant since he got his Sony Vaio laptop, so the first thing to do was to check what I had.

What we have here is a 1GHz PIII with 256Mb of RAM, 120Gb hard drive, DVD ROM, three Firewire ports, four USB ports (two are USB 2.0), an insanely good soundcard with the Creative Live Drive visible to bring more inputs and outputs to the front (including optical input - ideal for ripping overly copy-protected CDs) and an nVidia GeForce 4 (not sure how much memory). Bloody ace for a freebie. The grey box on top is my little toolbox, which was the best £4 I've spent in Woolworths EVER.

I'm going to make it much quieter, because it's way too loud at the moment. The graphics card is responsible for 80% of the noise, so that'll be first to get attention with one of these, followed by the hard drive (Matrox drives are much louder than the Seagate Baracuda that I'm a fan of) - probably going to go for one of these and lose the Live Drive until I can get a flasher case. The CPU is cooled by a duct over the heatsink and a fairly quiet fan drawing air across it, which will do for the time being but will probably get replaced with something like this or like this depending on my mood and what sort of case I end up with. The PSU seems to be very quiet indeed, but I might just baffle and dampen it a bit more to be on the safe side.

Why all this quietness? Well, I'm going to replace my existing server, Kryten, with this machine. I realised a while back that to call Kryten a server was a complete misnomer because I use it as a desktop machine virtually all the time, certainly more than I do for normal serving, and that the little machine was utterly underpowered for what I wanted to do with it. This is a far more suitable machine, but again it's going to be left on continuously in the corner of my living room, so I don't want it to sound like a jet.

Ian also gave me his old 19" Trinitron CRT monitor (29kg or so) seeing as he's got a 17" LCD (3kg or so) to replace it. Sod the weight though, the picture is awesome... not that the camera on my phone can show it!

On top of this, he gave me a bag of 'odds and sods', which include a USB CDRW drive, a USB2.0 hub, an ADSL router (same as mine, but without the 4-port switch) and an old 10Base-T hub (the only thing likely to be scrapped). Great day for blagging!

*wince*

A man in a Caerphilly social club declared on Saturday that if Wales managed to beat England in the rugby, he'd cut his own balls off. Wales went on to beat England 11-9, and bless him, he made good with his promise... he went home, carved off his two veg, and headed back to the club in a kilt with his offerings in a bag to show off his handiwork. Then he fainted. Now he's in the hospital where I used to work in a seriously ill condition, and there's talk of a prosthetic scrotum being made for him.

Apparently Geoff Huish, 26, has a history of mental problems - no, really - and shouldn't have been drinking on the medication he's on. I don't think he will again. When he fainted the bar staff popped his testicles into a pint glass full of ice, apparently under the assumption that somebody might want to dip into this particular gene pool in the future... don't hold your breath.

Google News Results here, so you can see that I'm not making it up.

Happy New Year, Chinese readers!

It's now the Year of the Rooster, although being of British persuasion I'd prefer to say the Year of the Cockerel. I'd prefer not to say Year of the Cock for obvious reasons.

Happy New Year!

Miss Hawaii

Justine Michioka, Miss Hawaii 2004, smiles at me on a daily basis whilst serenading her pineapples by making a really awkward chord shape on her ukulele.

What a fantastic promotional postcard! Her Mahalo uke in pink is the same as my little glossy purple one... fnurk indeed.

Silver Streak

Not at work today. My insides have been all jumbled up, my IBS is really bad (I feel like someone has opened me up and sewn in a large safe) and I've been dizzy. Fortunately that seems to have been purely down to having 4 hours sleep last night, so getting a bunch more hours after phoning in sick has been extremely beneficial. Anyway, I've taken lying on the sofa as an opportunity to watch a film I haven't seen for ages, Silver Streak.

I'd been waiting for this to come out on DVD for years, and finally I noticed a Region 1 DVD release in December last year. I picked it up, but it turned up just before Christmas so it got sidelined. At last, with my innards desperately trying to burst from my skin, I watched it today, and by God, it's still good. As well as Wilder and Pryor, Patrick McGoohan puts in a fantastic performance as the bad guy, the story is still great and the quality of the effects is top notch, given that it's 28 years old!

I remember, when much younger (the film a mere 8 years old at that point) watching it in Belgium with both French and Flemish subtitles, and loving it... I think it's one of those films that hung around in my childhood, almost certainly because of my dad's taste in films, and I've probably seen it a good ten or so times on TV, but it's not on nearly as often as it used to be. Best of all for me, it's a very nicely remastered picture, on a far better TV than we had when I was growing up, so I could appreciate the scenery much more this time, and it's ace.

I'd forgotten as well that a couple of bits of the film were pinched for the Lee Majors vehicle, The Fall Guy... but not as obviously as the episode of MacGyver that ripped off The Italian Job completely.